:( Motor problem

[at01]

I am connecting a standard motor to a six volt battery and a switch, however i wish to add a potentiometer to control the speed. I have tried this before but last time my potentiometer started smoking and died. I am in the uk, which potentiometer should i use.
A rating or part code would be fine.

 

[shrtrnd]

You need to give us the faceplate information from the motor, voltage, amperage, and whatever else is given. You might need a rheostat (wirewound variable resistor), instead of a pot.
With the motor and input voltage info, somebody will be able to help you on this site.
If you're smoking your pot (no pun intended), you are drawing some very high amperage. From your description, I can't tell if you're running some toy motor, or a heavy duty motor.

 

[Zander]

Right off the bat how many terminals are you using on the pot? What was it's wattage rating.

I had the same problem with my pots smoking for a dual 555 timer missing pulse detector circuit,

What was wrong was that I had all three terminals connected. To fix I just used one of the outside one's and the middle one.

Now if you want to use all three terminals, the one you have going to ground should have a resistor in series to ground. I think it has to do with the amount of power (watts) that is being dissipated through the pot.

What do you mean by Standard Motor? Is it a standard little DC motor? Your using just 6volts, so I'd Imagen it's a toy motor.

Is operating in one direction? If so put a diode on it to stop any kick back.

What is this motor driving? What's it's load?

 

[(*steve*)]

The main problem with using a potentiometer like this is that the power rating presumes that the full length of the resistive element is in use.

If only 1/4 of it is in use then the power that can be dissipated is 1/4 of the rated power.

This gets critical near the end of the travel as the current through the pot increases and the amount of the resistive element decreases. The end result is smoke unless you have a VERY high powered device relative to what you're controlling.